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Tag Archives: Social media fails of the week

Bullies in blue

A Chicago woman has said she was cyberbullied after writing on Facebook that she plans to go to the Million Woman March in Washington, D.C., to protest the election of Donald Trump. What’s newsworthy is the person she claims did the cyberbullying: A deputy sheriff from Marion County in Oregon. The sheriff’s office is now investigating whether the deputy violated the department’s social media policy according to oregonlive.com.

The wrong profile

A Las Vegas woman will spend a year in jail for creating a bogus Facebook profile of her ex-boyfriend. The Associated Press reports that Stephani Lawson filed multiple police reports accusing her ex-boyfriend of threatening on Facebook to kill her and her daughter. But the threats came from a page that Lawson made in order to impersonate her ex, and she pleaded guilty to perjury.

This was no harmless prank. The ex-boyfriend was arrested four times and charged with stalking, kidnapping and other charges.

The internet never forgets

Be careful what you say on Twitter. That’s the lesson that a Charlottesville, Va., city council and state board of education member learned the hard way this week. Wes Bellamy, who’s also a school teacher, wrote a series of tweets between 2009 and 2014 that were described as “racist, sexist, homophobic and sexually explicit in nature,” according to an AP story. Bellamy apologized on his Facebook page, but has since resigned his state board post.

Send out the clown rumors

A Western Pennsylvania town had a minor clown panic because of a rumor started on a Facebook page. CBSLocal.com reports that the Westmoreland County Fire/911 Incidents Facebook page warned its 17,000 followers of reports of menacing clowns in a handful of towns east of Pittsburgh. The panic got so bad that the Greensburg police department had to say the following on its Facebook page:

We can assure everyone we do not have any rogue clowns running around town. Please refrain from possibly tying up our emergency lines in reference to their post.

Be warned, though: Similar scurrilous rumors have begun to spread on Facebook about scary clowns in Reading. Just remember that it’s not true.

Sophomoric stupidity

An unidentified Quinnippiac University student in Connecticut caused an uproar this week when she appeared on Snapchat in “brown mask-like material” and a photo caption that read, “Black Lives Matter.” Aside from said brown makeup, the student appeared to be white and, it goes without saying, clueless (at best).

The university wouldn’t Identify the woman, but did say that it took disciplinary action against a student. Even if this were not a week where two black men were shot to death by police, her post shows incredibly poor judgment.

These are not the police you’re looking for

A man who created a fake Facebook page for the Parma, Ohio, police department is suing the department for unlawful prosecution. Anthony Novak was charged, and later acquitted, with disrupting public services after he created the bogus page, which police say confused people. Novak says police were just offended by what he posted on the page.

That’s not entirely true; you can almost always find a way out without humiliation or a visit from law enforcement. But none of these people took the road more cautiously traveled.

That joke isn’t funny anymore

Two Ohio girls who likely won’t get the above Smiths reference, got in trouble this week because an Instagram post. They posed with toy guns and a sign that read, “I hate everyone, you hate everyone, let’s shoot up the school at homecoming. The Findlay, Ohio, Courier said police were called to the school and determined that the post was a prank. The school was never placed on a lockdown, as it was pretty clear that the post was meant as a joke.

Here’s the punchline: The girls have been suspended. They likely aren’t going to the homecoming dance.

News weak

On Wednesday, Newsweek published a bombshell story on Donald Trump and his potential business conflicts of interests should he win the presidency. The story was solidly researched, thoroughly cited and well researched. So why would the author, Kurt Eichenwald, tweet a false rumor about Trump’s mental health history the day before publication?

The tweet was quickly deleted. But nothing ever really disappears from the internet and it was retweeted hundreds of times before Eichenwald was able to wipe it from his timeline.

When you write a questionable tweet, the time to hit “delete” is BEFORE you hit “send.”

Whine and dine

Shaming pro athletes on social media is turning into a trend. It happened with LeSean McCoy and this week it happened with Steelers running back DeAngelo Williams. Williams was in a restaurant in Maryland where he left a 75-cent tip on a $128.25 bill. The server complained on Facebook, and Williams defended himself on Twitter, saying he got lousy service.

I’m not sure who’s right, and I don’t think shaming a celebrity is the way to generate good tips. But if you’re a pro athlete getting paid millions, it’s time to be the bigger person and leave a generous tip regardless of the service. Most of the time you’re certain to be the bigger person anyway.

Comedian Louis C.K. famously said that there is no greater threat to women than men. Sadly, that may be true online as well as offline, as several news stories this week demonstrate:

What’s the matter with Kansas man?

A 19-year-old from Lawrence, Kansas, was charged with harassing a blogger from New Zealand. Kalim Akeba Lloyd Dowdell faces a misdemeanor charge after police said he sent inappropriate pictures to the Instagram account of Rachel Gronbeck, who writes about “fashion, online shopping and body positivity,” according to the AP. She blocked him, but he would create new accounts to get around that little inconvenience. Police say he sent sexual pictures to other people also.

Jersey churl

Mike Krawitz was a Republican candidate for local office in West Deptford Township before his political career came to a halt. Why did it come to a halt? Because he dropped out of the race.

Krawitz claimed to have been hacked, but but journalist Olivia Nuzzi said he had been harassing her on social media since December. Even the West Deptford Republican Committee chairman, Bob Waller, said there was no reason to believe that Krawitz was hacked.

He’s going to have to learn to lie better if he wants a career in politics. But first he should learn how to treat women better. It starts with not saying he hopes they get raped.

Please, no photographs

The only victims in this last story are sunflowers — and, possibly, Maryland’s farming community. The Baltimore Sun reports that “picture-taking hordes” are swarming the state’s countryside, photographing themselves amid the immensely popular sunflowers. But the Instagram activity has become so popular that state police had to ask people not to stop on certain roads to take photographs, as it creates a traffic jam and danger to pedestrians.

Can you have too much of a good thing, even when it comes to social media? Regretfully, yes.

Celebrities and social media are a mixed bag. This week I look at one who does social media well, one who did it badly and one non celebrity who nonetheless should have known better.

Silent Bob strikes back

Director Kevin Smith, whom you may know from “Mallrats,” “Clerks” and “Comic Book Men,” has urged an online commenter to make his own “dreams come true.” AWWW! That’s so sweet!

Not really. Smith was responding to a comment criticizing his daughter, Harley Quinn Smith, after she posted a picture of herself on Instagram. The troll, whom one can assume is an awful person, called the younger smith “ugly” and “talentless, and wished her dead. The elder Smith suggested the troll should follow his own dreams, “instead of slamming others for doing the same.”

Not exactly a zinger, but still a nice move to combat online bullies.

Photo bomb

TV talk show host Ellen DeGeneres posted a doctored photo of herself riding on the back of Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt on Twitter on Monday, with the caption: This is how I’m running errands from now on.”

Only problem is, the image of a white woman riding a black man is considered racist by many on social media. She came under fire for her post, and Degeneres had to later tweet that she’s “highly aware of the racism that exists in our country” and she’s not racist.

I doubt that any reasonable person would think Degeneres is racist, and I’m sure she wasn’t thinking of the historic symbolism of the photo. But once people on Twitter pointed that out — and many did — she should have pulled the photo and apologized.

Loud as a peacock

An NBC executive got in trouble this week after writing a post critical of presidential candidate Donald Trump. Robert Greenblatt, chairman of NBC Entertainment, said that Trump’s “‘mind’ is so demented,” though he doesn’t refer to Trump by name.

Greenblatt doesn’t oversee the news division or have any say in the network’s campaign coverage. Still, it was a remarkably idiotic thing to say on Facebook, even if he thought it was a private post.

Flag on the play

This week, a Texas A & M assistant football coach was disciplined Monday in the wake of a minor Twitter storm he created. After Tate Martell, a sought-after recruit from Las Vegas, announced last week he was reopening his recruitment, Aaron Moorhead wrote a series of tweets decrying the decline of loyalty. Martell had given a verbal commitment to the Aggies before changing his mind.

Perhaps Moorhead forgot that old saw about verbal contracts not being worth the paper they’re printed on.

In any case, I hope he learned the most important lesson of social media: You don’t have to tweet every thought you have.

All this over a goat

Sometimes a funny goat video is just a funny goat video. But that’s not how police say a Massachusetts man took it.

Kevin Sullivan took offense when a woman he knew shared a video of a goat (also named Kevin) getting ridiculed and acting mean toward other goats. The human Kevin thought it meant he was a bad father, according the Boston Globe. He met the woman and her boyfriend. A fight ensued, and police say Kevin stabbed the friend.

He’s now charged with assault and battery.

But at least he defended his reputation as a father.

The imaginary threats next door

A social networking site in California had to change the way its users report suspicious activity after some say it was used for racial profiling, the AP reports.

Nextdoor.com was created to connect real-life neighbors in online communities. But a group in Oakland, Calif., says users were profiling minorities, posting photos of, say, a black man walking “too slowly” in a neighborhood. The site’s administrators say they’re changing the process so people will have to think a little more before they post.

You know, how everyone else does on every other social network on the planet.

It’s a good move, because sometimes a guy walking down the street is just a guy walking down the street. Make that most of the time.

Today is April Fool’s Day, but let me assure that this week’s social media fails are all too real.

Safety dunce

Facebook committed an unfortunate fail on Sunday when a bomber killed more than 70 people in Lahore, Pakistan. The social media giant turned on its “safety check,” allowing people near a disaster to check in and let others know they’re safe.

The problem? The feature on Sunday sent the alert to people who were nowhere near the site of the attack. People in the United States and Britain received notifications asking them to check in.

As former Texas Gov. Rick Perry might say: “Oops.”

Getting Cairo’d away

Egypt is hardly a bastion of free expression, and this week showed why. A woman there sparked outrage when she wrote a Facebook post criticizing the ceremonial slaughter of sheep during a Muslim holiday. She was sentenced to three years in prison, and this week a court upheld her conviction on a charge of “contempt of religion,” according to the Washington Post.

Egypt has made progress since the Arab Spring uprising that ended the rule of dictator Hosni Mubarak, but clearly the country has a long way to go to recognizing human rights.

Welcome to Rhode Iceland

The smallest state was mocked this week on social media because of a goof in an online video promoting tourism. One of the sites featured in the video was a concert hall in Reykjavik, Iceland. But Gov. Gina Raimondo looks on the bright side: When people search for “Iceland,” they’ll find Rhode Island.

Roger Williams would be proud.

Affairs of state

The State Department had to delete a tweet this week that many people deemed inappropriate. It said, “Not a ’10’ in the US? Then not a 10 overseas.” The intent was to warn travelers against accepting drinks from strangers when in foreign countries. But the implied statement was: If you’re too unattractive for someone to buy you a drink at home, you’re too unattractive for that to happen in Europe.

“Don’t take free food or drinks from strangers when traveling abroad” would have been a more concise message, although it lacks the sexiness of the original tweet. Then again, it wouldn’t have to be deleted, either.

People on social media this week were angry. This week’s roundup includes tales of violence, racism and obscene hand gestures. Somehow, Donald Trump didn’t figure into any of the stories.

From spikes to fingers

TruTV is a cable network that shows — actually, I’m not sure what it shows — some kind of programming most of the year. For a few weeks in March, though, it broadcasts NCAA Tournament games. A website pointed this out, tweeting a graph showing interest spikes in March, and a flat line the rest of the year. The people behind TruTV’s social media account responded with another graph, this one showing an obscene hand gesture.

It’s a kinda funny response, but unless you want your brand to be seen as hostile, you should keep snark in the office before broadcasting it to the world.

People who run social media accounts for brands should heed the immortal words of Principal Seymour Skinner: “I think words I would never say.”

Anchors a — wait, what?

Pittsburgh TV anchor Wendy Bell apologized this week for a Facebook post she wrote that, without much effort, could easily be viewed as racist. She wrote about a recent mass shooting in Wilkinsburg and a restaurant employee she encountered. In both cases Bell drew on racial stereotypes to describe both the alleged assailants and the restaurant worker. Lots of negative comments followed, many of them critical. Bell initially said in a response to one such comment, “What I wrote is realism, not racism.”

As I said, she has since apologized. Hopefully she has learned a lesson about the overt and subtle forms of racially charged language.

Rabbit punches

A video posted Sunday on Twitter shows a man dressed as the Easter bunny trading punches with a customer. The video went viral, with more than 2,700 likes and 3,700 retweets as of Thursday morning. NJ.com reported that the fight started after a child fell out of the chair to have her pictiure taken.

Double fault

The tennis world is in a kerfuffle this year because of sexist comments made by former Indian Wells CEO Raymond Moore, who said women players “ride on the coat-tails of the men.” Tennis player Novak Djokovic added to the controversy said the prize money should be based on who draws the biggest crowd.

Then ESPN’s Darren Rovell tried to be cute. According to awfulannouncing.com, he tweeted a photo (since deleted) of Roger Federer playing to mostly empty seats. The problem?

You may have heard some of these stories about social media fails this week. If so, here they are again. If you haven’t heard them, read on:

Culture shock

Three University of Minnesota basketball players were suspended for the rest of the season this week after a sexually explicit video appeared on the social media accounts of one of the players.

Last Friday the videos appeared on Kevin Dorsey’s Instagram and Twitter accounts, according to the Associated Press. Head coach Richard Pitino suspended Dorsey and teammates Nate Mason and Dupree McBrayer, as well.

“I believe this is the best thing for the basketball program as we strive to build a strong and respectful culture each and every day,” Pitino said.

Youthful indiscretion is probably to blame for the videos, which were deleted within a half-hour of their original posting. But it’s never too early to learn what kind of social media activity will get you in hot water.

Torrent of hypocrisy

DJ Deadmau5 is one of my top five Canadians. Reason No. 1: He went on a coffee run with Toronto’s then-Mayor Rob Ford in a strangely fascinating YouTube video. Reason No. 2: He called out Kanye West for what looks like West’s downloading of torrent software.

According to SPIN.com, West tweeted a screenshot of his browser this week, showing he was listening to Sufjan Stevens on YouTube. The problem is, the screenshot also shows other tabs in his browser, including one for Serum, software for beat-making that costs $200, and one for Pirate Bay, the place to go if you want to illegally download music, software, etc. — you know, if you’re a moral cretin.

West, who’s outspoken in his opposition to online piracy, looks to be a hypocrite. Of course, there could be a valid explanation for why he was on Pirate Bay’s website. But not many people, including Deadmau5, are buying it.

The DJ called him out on Twitter, using words I can’t reprint here. He also suggested starting a Kickstarter to help Kanye raise the $200 to buy Serum and used the hashtag #prayforyeezy.

Maybe next time Kanye will learn to not take a screen capture of the entire window.

Impersonating a police department

Police presence on social media is generally a good thing. But police in Parma, Ohio, are dealing with an unusual Facebook problem:

Someone started a fake page for the department. In one post, the bogus page suggested ways sex offenders could have their names removed from the state database, according to cleveland.com.

The problem is, this fake page is causing real outrage — so much so that the actual police department had to warn residents that this bogus social media account exists.

Hockey plight in Canada

The Montreal Canadiens had to apologize this week after the team’s Twitter account let slip some responses to messages that contained offensive user names and, in some cases, racial slurs. The hockey team launched a campaign to thank its 1 million Twitter followers, automatically replying with a picture of a team jersey with the users’ Twitter handle on the back. Some of those,

The team had good intentions, but sometimes it helps to have humans double-check your tweets. Bots can be efficient, but sometimes they can be jerks, too.

Location, location, location

A Menifee, Calif., maintenance worker is in jail after police said he stole more than $250,000 from 33 women in Orange County. He reportedly found his victims via Instagram.

Police in Fullerton said Arturo Galvan would spot women in malls, coffee shops, etc, track their locations through Instagram and find their homes from geotagged photos. He then stole laptops, jewelry and underwear from his victims, police said.

This is a lesson to anyone who turns on their location data: Be careful how you use it.

Anti-social use of social media

Twice this week, schools had to close because of threats posted on social media:

In Willows, Calif., a threat against the high school led to classes being canceled throughout the district, which has about 1,400 students.

In Ellicot, Colo., an anonymous app for teens to express their feelings was the source of an anonymous threat against Ellicott School District 22, a small district east of Colorado Springs. Classes were canceled Monday but resumed Tuesday.